An emoticon is a sequence of printable characters, or a small image, intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion. Emoticons were created to help people express their emotions in text messaging. The most common are :) ;) and :(
Most modern messengers (e.g. instant messaging systems) will replace these simple text emoticons with more elaborate and even animated inline “smileys”. When a messenger system replaces a text emoticon with an inline smiley, the inline smiley is displayed at the location, within the conversation window, in which the text emoticon would have been displayed. The location in which the text emoticon would have been displayed is referred to herein as the “text emoticon location”.
Similar to text emoticons, once a smiley is displayed, the position of the smiley is fixed relative to the other elements of the conversation. For example, any scroll operation that affects the contents of a conversation window has the same effect on both the text and the smileys that are displayed within the conversation window. In addition, the animations of animated smileys occur within the confines of the initial display position of the animated smileys. While animated smileys may yawn, laugh, or even jiggle, they do so without departing from their initial display positions.